Illegal fishing is a problem all around the world. Just like crime can occur anywhere,
illegal fishing can occur anywhere, except it's much harder for law enforcement to react,
given how large the oceans are. This isn't just about preserving the world because it's
pretty, it's also about making sure that we are able to feed ourselves as a species going into the future.
The vessel sometimes known as the STS-50 had been engaging in illegal
fishing targeting Patagonian toothfish, also known as Chilean sea bass, for years. It was
in the Northwestern Pacific in Chinese ports. It was in Southwest and Southeast Africa.
It was operating in the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific and Southern
Oceans. The vessel just became a rotating cast of identities, names, home ports, and
flag states that they were constantly changing out in an attempt to evade law enforcement
around the world. They lied to port officials, they lied to coastal states, they submitted
false documentation relating to the catch onboard the vessel and what they were trying
to export. A significant portion of the world's fisheries are overfished and this trend is only growing.
IUU fishing is a technical term. It stands for illegal, unregulated and unreported
fishing. IUU fishing, is a major contributor to unsustainable fishing practices around
the world. Some estimates have placed the upper end of the value at 23.5 billion US
dollars per year in product and up to one in five fish being linked to possible illegal
fishing. There's frequently an overlap in operators who are willing to engage in illegal
fishing and in forced labor. If you're willing to break the rules for fisheries, you're probably
also willing to break the rules and abuse your crew by forcibly keeping them onboard
the vessel, which they can't leave because it's out at sea. The STS-50 is a case in point
where the crew was held onboard without pay for several months.
It really comes down to the problem that when you get off shore it's harder for law enforcement
to monitor what's actually happening on board vessels. And this is where OceanMind comes in.
OceanMind started out as a technology project to better identify illegal fishing
for action by enforcement authorities. We use a variety of different technologies, including
remote sensing, think of that as cameras from space as well as machine learning, which is
a form of artificial intelligence, to review tracking information from tens of thousands
of vessels all around the world in real time. Technology is important to fight illegal fishing,
but at the end of the day, technology isn't going to save us by itself. A human still
needs to carry out an additional investigation.
We had been aware of the STS-50 for several years. OceanMind worked with INTERPOL to get
the information to the right people who could take action on it, in this case Indonesia,
so that they could stage an intercept. I was the legal consultant at the Indonesia Presidential
Task Force to combat illegal fishing. From 2014 until 2019, Indonesian government sunk
about 560 to 580 illegal fishing vessels. Guarding your ocean is impossible. We don't
have that amount of patrol vessel that's enough to cover every inch of our ocean border. So
the sinking of the illegal fishing vessel was actually a message to the global community,
that illegal fishing is our common enemy. The STS-50 had been anchored in the port of
Maputo in Mozambique. It was difficult to follow the track. The operator of the STS-50
went to extreme lengths to hide their identity while still transmitting some kind of signal
that was showing a degree of transparency. This helped them blend in with the rest of
the shipping traffic. We were able to do a forensic analysis, pull apart the data and
then put it back together in a way that showed us the track of this unique transmitter.
Minister Susi decided to request the Navy to send out one of their vessels to arrest this STS-50.
And then we just waited. We just waited. We just waited.
That was a very tense period.
And then we get the news that that vessel managed to arrest the STS-50. After the Indonesians
finally arrested and detained the vessel, I think there was a lot of pride to be a part
of a team that worked together to do this. When it comes to actually seizing someone's property
and stopping their transit through the oceans, that's a big deal. The Indonesian
court finally decided to confiscate the vessel. The captain was sentence with monetary penalty
for about 14,000 US dollar. And he was unable to pay, so he has to stay in jail for about
four months. And then he was deported back to the home country. Illegal fishing is pervasive
around the world. I think it is our moral duty, a legal obligation, to cooperate with
other states in order to break down this illegal fishing operation. It's hard to say that
any one business or any one country is more involved than another, because in reality,
it requires a global network of people who are willing to bend or break the rules
to enable this activity and for the rest of us to turn a blind eye by not asking harder
questions about where our fish comes from and demanding the validation required to make
sure that it is sustainably caught legally with well-paid and cared-for crews. Our vision
is a world of safe, legal, and sustainable fisheries and similar uses of the world's
ocean resources. We want a relationship between humans at the sea that can continue for years to come.